Changes

I finished my first year-long English teaching contract in Korea on November 30. I had been in Korea for 2 months before signing the contract, so I've been in Korea for just over 14 months now (437 days at the time of this post).

I had expected to sign a new contract with the same company (DYB Choisun, 최선어학관), but for reasons I have never been told, the owner of the school did not want me to come back for another year. This came as a surprise to me and my coworkers. Particularily since I had approached the subject of resigning 4 months before the end of my contract and eventually had been told by the owner I could sign a new contract 3 weeks before I was finally told I would not be able to do so. Could this be attributed to the non-confrontational style of interaction the East is known for? Maybe the owner was trying to "save face" by lying to me? I was curious to find out, but the owner Song Oh-Hyeon (송오현) refused to meet with me.

Nevertheless, I found myself with just 3 weeks to make new plans.

I had planned on taking a few weeks off to visit my brother and parents in Sweden over the Christmas holidays and then returning for the second contract. Now I had to worry about finding another job. There are only two other companies that I know of in Korea that pay as well as the company I had been working for and one of them has a higher standard for teachers' credentials than I could pass. The company that I had a chance to work for and therefore continue to maintain my current level of income and workload didn't respond promptly to my inquiries. So I found myself examining other options.

I decided that I will still visit Sweden as planned. I will leave in just two days. I'll be there for 3 weeks and then spend 4 nights in Amsterdam for the new year celebration. This is a well deserved break from Korea. Europe is so different different from Korea and I'm really excited to go.

I researched my options a bit and decided that I will not return to teaching/working right away. Instead I will attend Yonsei University in Seoul to be a fulltime Korean language student. I have since applied, been accepted, and paid tuition for the first 10 week course that will begin on January 10. There is a placement test on January 7. Regardless of the level I enter in, I will have 4 hours of class M-F 9am-1pm. I will also try to spend 4 hours doing homework and try to watch Korean television dramas as a way to get listening practice and hear how Korean is spoken in the context of real-ish situations.

I've studied Korean for 7 months, basically on my own or with Korean language exchange partner every day for an average 1.5 hours each day. I'm definitely learning grammar and vocabulary words because I am pretty confident with my reading and writing ability. My difficulty is in listening and speaking. I don't get much practice doing those. Mostly it's because I'm too shy/embarrassed to speak to Koreans. I don't have any confidence in my pronunciation or in my ability to say something that a Korean would say. I don't know if what I want to say is common or not. I have begun to increase my practice of saying the things I read out loud in order to give my tongue practice pronouncing sentences. I've also been watching more Korean television dramas to work on listening and to learn Korean phrases in the context of situations.

I'm confident that by totally immersing myself into the Korean language without worrying about work, I will be able to increase my language ability enormously over the next 6 months of classes.

At the moment, I am considering traveling around Korea after the second semester ends in June. At that time, I *should* be fluent enough to handle myself in most situations I could encounter on such a trip. The weather will be warm and I'll have a whole country to explore until my money runs out and it's time to go back to work.